Fyi - Off Center

FYI

The "Jaws" of the aquarium set - Flazey, the grouper that ate $5,000 worth of its tankmates in an Illinois pet shop - will be dining out from now on.

Terry Haley, the aquarium store owner from Lansing, Ill., who finally wearied of the grouper's taste for expensive tropical fish, released his prize glutton on Monday in the ocean off Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Flazey - short for "fat and lazy" - was a foot long and weighed 3 pounds when Haley bought it from a Fort Lauderdale aquarium supplier. But after 1 1/2 years of eating its way through the 1,100-gallon tank in Haley's shop, the fish measures 3 1/2 feet and weighs 35 pounds.

In case it's been preying on your mind, FYI is happy to report that Adolf Hitler's yacht has now been sunk for good.

The 85-foot wooden yacht Ostwind, Der Fuhrer's personal pleasure craft, was originally scuttled on June 4 in the ocean just off Miami Beach, Fla. The sinking was part of observances of the 50th anniversary of the infamous "Voyage of the Damned" - the ill-fated voyage of more than 900 Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazism. Their ship was refused entry into the United States (which had not yet entered World War II), and most of the refugees had to return to Europe and eventually became victims of the Holocaust.

The sinking had a practical purpose - the yacht was supposed to become part of an artificial reef system. But somebody goofed, and the boat was scuttled in water only 20 feet deep.

Last week, the Ostwind was raised again, then sunk again in its proper destination, 275 feet down.

"In the struggle against evil, every once in a while it sticks up its head again and we have to push it right back down," Rabbi Barry Konovitch, of Miami Beach's Cuban-Hebrew Congregation, said aboard an observer vessel. "This time, we pushed it down forever."

FROM SEA TO YUKKY SEA

We vacationed at the shore last year, and the beach was soooo dirty ...

How dirty was it?

It was so dirty, the thousands of volunteers who combed 3,500 miles of the nation's beaches last fall picked up more than 1,000 tons of junk. That's nearly 600 pounds for every mile of beach.

And one can't forget the bedsprings, mattresses, even a kitchen sink or two - or the 11 bottles containing notes from far-off places. And finally, the 1,718 plastic syringes and other medical wastes, not to mention the set of dentures.

The Center for Marine Conservation, a private conservation group, talked about the volunteer cleanup effort in a report last week titled "Trash on America's Beaches: A National Assessment."

Covering what amounted to one-fourth of the nation's beachfront, the 47,000 volunteers found and recorded 1,973,995 pieces of debris from discarded fishing lines to unwanted underwear. Despite the uproar about medical wastes, only a small percentage of the items were reported in that category.

Eleven volunteers found bottles with messages inside, including one on a Connecticut beach that said it had been dumped into the water in Europe.

And the volunteers at times uncovered not trash, but cash - including a $100 bill on a Texas beach and a diamond and amethyst necklace in Florida, according to the report.

PENINSULA TRIVIA

Last week's answer: Even before the English landed at Jamestown in 1607, the Spanish attempted to settle here. In 1570, a party of Jesuit missionaries sailed up the James River, landed at College Creek, crossed the Peninsula near the future site of Williamsburg and eventually settled on the banks of the York River near Indian Field Creek, where they built a hut and a chapel. They weren't welcomed in the neighborhood, though; six months later, the local Indians massacred them.

This week's question: On Tuesday, we celebrated the "homecoming" of the Newport News-built submarine USS Newport News. When did the local shipyard build its first sumbarine?